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If you want to make it easy for visitors to your website to record comments and give you feedback, you can add an online guest book. Much like a physical guest book provided for visitors to sign at events such as weddings or funerals, an online guest book is a great way to let people express themselves as they interact with your site. With many online guest book applications, you can customize features according to your specifications.

1. Click the settings button on your online guest book and set the number of entries you want to display at a time. For example, you might want to restrict this number to 10 to avoid overwhelming your visitors. They can click the “Next” button to see more results if they want. You might prefer to display more entries at a time to show visitors how popular your site is or to let them quickly scan a larger number of guest comments on a single page.

2. Select the option for whether you want to allow guests to use HTML in the entries and whether you wish to enable them to post images. For example, a visitor might want to include a picture of himself along with his entry to make it more personal. Be wary, though, because you may find that people are posting inappropriate pictures.

3. Enable the spam and language filters for your online guest book if you want to filter out marketing messages and objectionable language, such as swear words, bigoted terminology or hate speech. If your site is designed to be viewed by all age groups, it’s a good idea to filter the guest book to avoid exposing younger visitors to inappropriate material. If anything goes on your site, you can avoid using filters and let people freely express themselves.

4. Click the settings button and select a theme or layout for your online guest book if you want to change its appearance. You can customize items such as the background color, font choice and text color as well as whether you want to show an image. Customizing the appearance will make the guest book integrate better with the rest of your site. For example, if your site uses green and black for its main colors, you can make the guest book use the same scheme.

Tip

Make a test entry in your online guest book to see if you like how it appears after you have customized the settings.

About the Author

Julius Vandersteen has been a freelance writer since 1999. His work has appeared in “The Los Angeles Times,” “Wired” and “S.F. Weekly.” Vandersteen has a Bachelor of Arts in journalism from San Francisco State University.